The Eiffel Tower was evacuated Sept. 28 after an anonymous bomb threat against the symbolic Parisian tourist attraction was phoned in; no explosive device was found. The day before the Eiffel Tower threat, French authorities closed the Gare Saint-Lazare in central Paris after an abandoned package, later determined innocuous, was spotted in the train station.

These two incidents serve as the latest reminders of the current apprehension in France that a terrorist attack is imminent. This concern was expressed in a very public way Sept. 11, when Bernard Squarcini, the head of France’s Central Directorate of Interior Intelligence (known by its French acronym, DCRI), told French newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche that the risk of an attack in France has never been higher. Never is a long time, and France has long faced terrorist threats, making this statement quite remarkable.

Squarcini has noted in recent interviews that the combination of France’s history as a colonial power, its military involvement in Afghanistan and the impending French ban on veils that cover the full face and body (niqabs and burqas) combined to influence this threat environment.

A Month of Threats

After the French Senate approved the burqa ban Sept. 14 — which will go into effect next March — a bomb threat against the Eiffel Tower was called in that evening, causing French authorities to evacuate the site and sweep it for explosive devices.

On Sept. 16, five French citizens were abducted from the Nigerien uranium-mining town of Arlit in an operation later claimed by al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), a claim French Defense Minister Herve Morin later assessed as valid. In July, French Prime Minister Francois Fillon declared that France was at war with the North African al Qaeda franchise after the group killed a French hostage it had kidnapped in April. Fillon’s announcement came three days after the end of a four-day French-Mauritanian offensive against AQIM militants that resulted in the deaths of several militants. After the offensive, AQIM branded French President Nicolas Sarkozy an enemy of Allah and warned France that it would not rest until it had avenged the deaths of its fighters.

French officials have also received unsubstantiated reports from foreign liaison services of plans for suicide bombings in Paris. National Police Chief Frederic Pechenard told Europe 1 radio Sept. 22 that in addition to the threatening statements from AQIM, the French have received specific information that the group is working to target France.

On Sept. 6, Der Spiegel reported that authorities were investigating reports provided by the United States that a German-born Islamist extremist arrested in Afghanistan has warned of possible terrorist attacks in Germany and elsewhere in Europe — including France — planned by jihadists based in Pakistan. This story hit the English-language media Sept. 28, and included reports that the threat may have involved plans to launch Mumbai-like armed assaults in multiple targets in Europe.

In the words of Squarcini to the press, these combined incidents mean “all the blinkers are on red.” This statement is strikingly similar to one in the 9/11 Commission Report attributed to then-CIA Director George Tenet, who said that in July 2001 “the system was blinking red.”

While an examination of the current threat situation in France is interesting, it is equally interesting to observe the way that the French are handling their threat warnings in the media.

The Threat Environment in France

While its neighbors such as Spain and the United Kingdom have suffered bloody attacks since 9/11, the French so far apparently have been spared — although there are some who suspect the yet-unsolved June 2009 crash of Air France Flight 447 may have resulted from foul play, along with the explosion at the AZF fertilizer plant in September 2001.

France has long been squarely in the crosshairs of jihadist groups such as AQIM. This is due not only to its former colonial involvement in North Africa but also to its continued support of governments in countries like Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia deemed un-Islamic by jihadists. It is also due to France’s military commitment in Afghanistan. Moreover, on the domestic side, France has a significant Muslim minority largely segregated in slums known in French as “banlieues” outside France’s major cities. A significant proportion of the young Muslim men who live in these areas are unemployed and disaffected. This disaffection has been displayed periodically in the form of large-scale riots such as those in October 2005 and November 2007, both of which resulted in massive property destruction and produced the worst civil unrest in France since the late 1960s. While not all those involved in the riots were Muslims, Muslims did play a significant and visible role in them.

Moves by the French government such as the burqa ban have stoked these tensions and feelings of anger and alienation. The ban, like the 2004 ban against headscarves in French schools, angered not only jihadists but also some mainstream Muslims in France and beyond.

Still, other than a minor bombing outside the the Indonesian Embassy in Paris in October 2004, France has seemingly been spared the type of attacks seen in Madrid in March 2004 and London in July 2005. And this is in spite of the fact that France has had to deal with Islamist militants for far longer than its neighbors. Algerian Islamist militants staged a series of attacks involving gas canisters filled with nails and bolts on the Paris subway system in 1995 and 1996, and during the 1980s France experienced a rash of terrorist attacks. In 1981 and 1982, a group known as the Lebanese Armed Revolutionary Faction attacked a series of diplomatic and military targets in several French cities. Algerian militants also hijacked an Air France flight in December 1994, a situation resolved when personnel from the French Groupe d’Intervention de la Gendarmerie Nationale (GIGN) stormed the aircraft in Marseilles and killed all four hijackers.

“Shoe Bomber” Richard Reid, who is serving a life sentence in the United States for trying to blow up a Paris-to-Miami flight with an explosives-stuffed shoe in December 2001, staged his attack out of France.

In 2001, French authorities broke up a French-Algerian terrorist cell planning to attack the U.S. Embassy in Paris. The six militants, some of whom French authorities had linked to terrorist training camps in Afghanistan, were convicted and sentenced to lengthy prison terms.

Also in 2001, Algerian extremists were convicted in connection with an aborted plot to attack a Christmas market at Strasbourg Cathedral on New Year’s Eve 2000.

In January 2005, French police arrested a cell of alleged Chechen and Algerian militants, charging members with plotting terrorist attacks in Western Europe. According to French authorities, the group planned attacks against government and Jewish targets in the United Kingdom as well as against Russian diplomatic and business targets in Western and Central Europe. Other targets included tourist attractions and crowds in the United Kingdom and France and French train stations.

More recently, in October 2009, French particle physicist Adlene Hicheur and his brother, Halim, who holds a Ph.D. in physiology and biomechanics, were arrested and charged with helping AQIM plan terrorist attacks in France.

In the final analysis, France is clearly overdue for a successful jihadist attack, and has been overdue for several years now. Perhaps the only thing that has spared the country has been a combination of proactive, skillful police and intelligence work — the kind that resulted in the thwarted attempts discussed above — and a little bit of luck.

Alerts

France has a national security alert system called the Vigipirate, which has four levels:

* Yellow, which means there is an uncertain threat. * Orange, which signifies there is a plausible threat. * Red, which signals a highly probable threat. * Scarlet, which indicates a certain or known threat.

The Vigipirate level has been set at red since the aftermath of the July 2005 London bombings. This level is probably justified given that France is overdue for an attack, and French authorities undoubtedly have been busy investigating a large number of potential threats since the decision was made to raise the level to red. Still, as we have long discussed, this type of warning system has a tendency to get some attention when the levels are initially raised, but after five years of living at level red, French citizens are undoubtedly experiencing some degree of alert fatigue — and this is why Squarcini’s recent statements are so interesting. Apparently, he does not have the type of hard intelligence required to raise the threat level to scarlet — or perhaps the French government does not want to run the political risk of the backlash to the restrictive security measures they would have to institute if they raised the level. Such measures could include dramatically increasing security personnel and checkpoints and closing certain metro stops, train stations and airports, all things that could be incredibly disruptive.

Generally speaking, a figure like Squarcini would not provide the type of warnings he has recently shared in the press if his service had a firm grasp on the suspects behind the plot(s) about which he is concerned. For example, the FBI felt it had good coverage of groups plotting attacks in some of the recent thwarted plots in the United States, including the group arrested in May 2009 and charged with plotting to bomb two Jewish targets in the Bronx and shoot down a military aircraft at an Air National Guard base. In such a case, the director of the FBI did not feel the need to alert the public to the threat; he believed his agents had everything under control. Therefore, that Squarcini is providing this warning indicates his service does not have a handle on the threat or threats.

Information about a pending threat is not released to the public lightly, because such information could well compromise the source of the intelligence and endanger the investigation into the people behind the plot. This would only be done in situations where one has little or no control over the potential threat. There are numerous factors that would influence the decision to release such information.

Perhaps one of the first is that in a democracy, where public officials and their parties can be held responsible for failure to prevent an attack — as the Aznar government in Spain was following the Madrid train bombings — information pertaining to pending threats may also be released to protect governments from future liability. Following every major attack in a democratic nation, there is always an investigation that seeks to determine who knew what about the threat and when. Making threat information public can spare politicians from falling victim to a witch hunt.

Alternatively, some suggest that French authorities are being pressured to make such warnings to distract the public from domestic problems and Sarkozy’s low popularity. Many also believe the French government has been using its campaign against the Roma as such a distraction. Sarkozy, widely perceived as law-and-order oriented and tough on crime and terrorism, is indeed struggling politically. While the current warnings may provide such a beneficial distraction for Sarkozy, it is our assessment that the terrorist threat to France is very real, and is not being fabricated for political purposes.

Warnings also can be issued in an effort to pre-empt an attack. In cases in which authorities have intelligence that a plot is in the works, but insufficient information to identify the plotters or make arrests, announcing that a plot has been uncovered and security has been increased is seen as a way to discourage a planned attack. With the devolution of the jihadist threat from one based upon a central al Qaeda group to one based upon regional franchises, small cells and lone wolves, it is more difficult to gather intelligence that indicates the existence of these diverse actors, much less information pertaining to their intent and capabilities. In such a murky environment, threat information is often incomplete at best.

Whatever Squarcini’s motive, his warning should serve to shake the French public out of the alert fatigue associated with spending five years at the red level. This should cause the public (and cops on the beat) to increase their situational awareness and report suspicious behavior. The suspicious package seen at the Gare Saint-Lazare on Monday may well have been reported as a result of this increased awareness.

As the jihadist threat becomes almost as diffuse as the criminal threat, ordinary citizens who practice good situational awareness are an increasingly important national security resource — a complex network of eyeballs and brains that Squarcini may have been attempting to activate with his warning. With the burqa ban scheduled to begin next spring, French troops in Afghanistan and the ongoing conflict with AQIM, the threats are likely to continue for the near term — meaning France will remain on alert.

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Gold Forecaster - Why Did the Gold Price Start Rising From $275, in 2000 and Why is it Still Rising Through $1,300?

By Julian D.W. Phillips

Sep 28 2010 1:26PMwww.goldforecaster.com

Hindsight is always a satisfying exercise, because you have all the facts, you know what happened eventually and you simply have to find the reasoning that is now established by history. Forecasters can be judged efficiently as to whether they were right or wrong in the light of history after the event, only.

Forecasting is an entirely different matter because you have no facts from the future. What you do have is the past and the present. Now you have to extrapolate these forward to construct tomorrow’s picture. This requires giving each its due portion in that future and its correct weighting together with a good dash of insight. Hopefully you will do the job well and be correct. This may sound simple but it isn’t. To help you look forward we look at the last decade in the gold market.

The “Washington” Agreement

Take the gold price. From 1985 despite all the good pointers to higher prices, few foresaw the vigor of the attack by the world’s monetary authorities on gold and yet that was the prime influence on the gold price. When 1999 came most believed the all the world’s central banks were keen to sell all the gold they had to get this barbarous relic out of their vaults. Then came the “Washington Agreement”. On the surface looked as though it followed the line of thought that central banks would continue to be unrestrained sellers. Britain appeared to confirm that picture as it sold half its reserves at the lowest price seen since then. This point in time and price is affectionately known as the “Brown Bottom” of gold, after the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr Gordon Brown. What seemed an innocuous agreement simply limited the volume of sales per annum to 400 tonnes from all the signatories put together.

What was understood only later was that this cap on sales removed the fear of unlimited sales. The signatories felt that this limitation would protect gold producers from seeing a lower gold price and deter future gold production. But significantly, this limitation on “Official” supplies went further than this, it reassured the market that not only was the gold price underpinned but “Official” supplies were capped. The intention of the Agreement was to hold the market steady at those prices.

A further look at the demand / supply numbers showed that if demand rose, total supply would not increase. Traders demonstrated this when they went long and took the gold price from just over $300 to $390 and then took it back down again to $326. This was enough to scare the gold mining companies that had hedged their future gold sales.They soon realized how quickly the hedges they had could become very unprofitable as the gold price rose. Suddenly gold miners themselves saw that the gold price would fall no further so there was no point in continuing to hold them

De-hedging compensates “Official” sales.

Glass WorldDe-hedging started and the miners went to the market to buy back their hedges. This allowed them to make money as the gold price rose. Cutting these hedged positions realized profits there and removed potential losses. This was done in such high volumes, right through to 2010 that it accounted for almost the entire amount of gold sold by the signatories to the Washington Agreement and its successor, the Central Bank Gold Agreement [around 400 tonnes per annum.With supply limited to newly mined gold [which could not rise quickly for the easily mined deposits had gone. It takes around 5 years from the discovery of gold in the ground to taking that gold out of the ground and to market.

The Advent of the gold E.T.F.

Over the years the gold price slowly rose on the back of the traditional demand such as India and the jewelry trade. Then came the accelerant, the gold Exchange Traded Fund [conceived by the World Gold Council’s Burton]. This allowed various types of funds to buy gold via the shares of the ETF [who bought gold with the proceeds of the sale of these shares] and directly impact the gold price, while avoiding the corporate risks attendant on mining companies. Funds such as these had not been allowed to hold bullion itself, until then. These were brand new investors bringing a new type of gold demand to the market from the States. Until then traditional investors in gold bought bullion direct from the London gold market, had the costs and difficulties in storing bullion, which precluded other types of investors from being in the market. So great was the impact of this new demand that these funds in total now hold more than the central banks of Switzerland and China do.

Nevertheless the market was still focused on traditional demand as being the mainstay of the gold market and controlling the gold price. They still do today. It is a commonly held belief that investment demand will vanish as quickly as it came. Then we will see the gold price turn back to India and jewelry demand at prices well below today’s price.

Widening Investment Demand and falling “Official sales.

But investment demand extended from primarily U.S. fund demand to a much wider type of investment demand. The reason was because of an underestimated fundamental that most commentators ignored and rejected. As in 1999 the precipitant turned out to be the European central banks. The second European central bank gold agreement saw the ceiling of 500 tonnes hit only once or twice during its 5 year life.

In the last years of the agreement the sales started to drop quickly. In the last year of the agreement the sales tailed off steadily in the first and second quarter of that year until in the last quarter hardly any gold was sold by them whatsoever. In the first year of the Third Agreement, sales have been close to zero [with 6.2 tonnes sold for coinage – not in the spirit of the agreement]. What should we learn from this? The sales had done their job of supporting the advent of the Euro on the world’s foreign exchanges, obviating the need for further sales. The first clause of all the Agreements stated that “gold would remain an important reserve asset”. Gold would remain in the firm grip of central banks from then onwards in Europe. In itself it reassured investors that when the dark days arrived gold would have a use in the monetary world.

“Official” buying

Gold barsNow came another shot in the arm for gold. Asian central banks and Russia started to buy gold and seriously. The implication was that gold would have a use in times of monetary stress. In itself this meant little, but once the U.S. dollar started to weaken against the Euro, confidence in the world’s leading reserve currency began to falter. Currency values had become vulnerable to falling. Gold rose when currencies fell and the safety of ones wealth came under pressure.

For eighteen months gold had difficulties in rising beyond $1,200 for a variety of reasons. But then the transition of gold from a ‘commodity’, an industrial metal, a piece of non-corroding decorative jewelry, to an investment people with money buy, came about.

The falling dollar, the various Sovereign debt crises, future currency crises, deflation, potential inflation or even hyperinflation appeared on the horizon, each persuading investors that gold was a good place to keep hold of one’s wealth. The days of monetary stress have arrived.

From now on gold’s evolution will be the most vigorous of its several stages of development. We are on the edge of a whole new way of looking at gold and its relevance in the global economy.

What are the consequences for the gold price and your investments in gold?

Doug Henderson, JD is a legal mediator specializing in civil rights and Director of Gary Null and Associates in New York City.

Gary Null is the host of the nation’s longest running public radio program on nutrition and natural health and a multi-award-winning director of progressive documentary films, including Vaccine Nation and Autism: Made in the USA. Dr. Null is also the plaintiff on a law suit against the FDA to prevent the launch of the swine flu vaccine until safety studies have been thoroughly conducted.

It has been a particularly bad month for the pharmaceutical industrial complex in its ongoing litigations in American courts.

Among the main pharmaceutical headlines,

• Merck’s Gardasil vaccine for HPV, now being widely administered to pre-teens, was found to be linked to amyltrophic lateral sclerosis, commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease

• Following a $1.4 billion fine in promoting one of its blockbuster drugs Zyprexa off-label, deceptive correspondence was uncovered by Eli Lilly gaming the system again by promoting another one of its drugs, Cymbalta, off-label for fibromyalgia

• AstraZeneca was fined $160 million for scamming the Medicaid system in Kentucky after being fined $215 million for ripping off Alabama

• Glaxo lost a Pennsylvania trial for failing to warn doctors and pregnant women of the dangers of its antidepressant drug Paxil related to birth defects

• Pfizer scored a record-breaking fine of $2.3 billion for illegally marketing several drugs over the years:

o Bextra

o Zyvox

o Geodon

o Lyrica

These kinds of charges, among the many others, have become a habit for drug makers for the past dozen years.

When we speak of the pharmaceutical industry complex, it does not refer solely to private drug manufacturers. The complex, like a Matrix that holds captive the health of the nation in medical slavery by its own design and manipulation, is a consortium, a spiders’ web woven with financial attachments throughout the medical profession.

In addition to the pharmaceutical and medical device firms, this complex includes every government health agency,

• the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)

• the Centers for Disease Control (CDC)

• the National Institutes of Health (NIH)

• the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS),

...as well as drug lobbying firms now employing a large number of former Congress-persons, insurance and HMO companies, all of the leading professional medical associations such as,

• the American Medical Association (AMA)

• the American Psychiatric Association (APA)

• the majority of medical schools and their research departments who are heavily funded by drug money

• many of the most prestigious medical journals

• all of this filtering downward to the physicians who diagnose our illnesses and prescribe our medications and treatments

America is rightly regarded as having led much of the world in many qualitative innovations in all fields.

That reputation is duly deserved. However, there is a new dynamic at work that is causing this reputation to be challenged. We are a nation that prides itself in our humanity, our sense of fairness, but today there is a growing concern that we are now being monikered as a country held hostage to a national security complex, which includes the largest military complex in the world, an obscenely expensive healthcare system and self-serving bureaucracies and private industries that serve their own financial ends.

So it is not surprising that after spending this year $2.6 trillion on healthcare, we have such little health to show for it. There are second world countries where people live longer and healthier lives. And we have the worst healthcare among developed nations. So what have we received for our $2.6 trillion.

As the current healthcare debate continues to rage over in sundries - the $200 billion net profit health insurance industry - the entire deliberation over disease prevention and treatment has been overshadowed.

And amidst this partisan and ideological anarchy, perpetuated by our elected officials, the media, and fueled by the pharmaceutical complex, two other areas America excels as a leader above all other developed nations is in being the premier breeding ground for,

• the pharmaceutical industrial complex’s greatest profits

• the world’s exemplar in medical fraud and corruption

The fairy tale of America’s health as being best served by drugs is a creation of this complex, a lullaby that brings ill citizens repeatedly to their doctors and hospitals for diagnosis and treatment, or simply to deny healthcare altogether to the uninsured.

The country is pacified by a blind belief that the drugs being prescribed to them have been proven safe because our government health agencies have our physical health and well-being in their best intentions. This is a lie, an extraordinarily deadly lie.

Iatrogenesis, medically induced injury and death, is the number one cause of death in American medicine annually, since only a small percentage of these deaths are actually reported. Each year more Americans die from preventable deaths due to our medical system than all military causalities in the two world wars combined.

This is tantamount to medical genocide.

One of the major causes of these deaths is the overmedication of Americans in all ages. The constant need for profits has created an environment that allows the pharmaceutical industrial complex to use their enormous financial and political clout to literally make normal life experiences into new diseases, such as social anxiety disorder, in order to sell its drugs.

The pharmaceutical industry has been given the authority to pathologize life, with the drugging of our children, seniors, etc.

For example, the leading cause of AIDS deaths today is a result of liver failure. This is not a condition of HIV infection, but a direct result of the anti-HIV drug AZT. Is it little wonder then that we are being intimidated and frightened into believing that mandatory vaccination is being touted even though the science of efficacy and safety, even the need, for these new swine flu vaccines is patently unproven.

It is perhaps one of the largest falsehoods ever perpetuated on humanity that dwarfs the sleaze on Wall Street.

If any one of us committed manslaughter, we would be behind bars instead of walking a crimson carpet into the offices of our elected officials in the Congress and Senate or past the gates guarded by the nation’s Cerberus, Rahm Emmanuel, to lobby the White House.

Yet if we are a pharmaceutical executive, or a lobbyist representing a drug company who has collected a litany of charges including medical fraud, criminal salesmanship, gaming the insurance industries, repeated lying to federal officials, and manipulation of data regarding life-threatening adverse effects of drugs that have killed so many people, we can walk away with a fine, a surge in the stock market after a settlement, a financial bonus, and the personal satisfaction in not having to apologize so we can continue business as usual.

This is the power the pharmaceutical industrial complex possesses and its usurped right to distain every noble principle in the Hippocratic Oath that every physician dedicates her or himself to live by, “That I will exercise my art solely for the cure of my patients, and will give no drug and perform no operation for a criminal purpose.”

Every American who is prescribed a drug by a physician has the belief that that pill has undergone rigorous trials to scrutinize its safety.

And when there are known potential adverse effects, we blindly assume these are known to the attending physician. However, this is a myth perpetuated not only by drug makers, but by our own federal health agencies.

A 2003 investigation published in The Independent in the UK reported that,

One case involved a very popular over-the-counter drug, the painkiller ibuprofen.

The investigators’ search uncovered concealed data showing that ibuprofen increased heart attack risks by 25 percent. Even Freedom of Information (FOI) filings to the FDA do not produce all the information being requested. For example, a group of Swiss investigators filed an FOI to procure trial data about the musculoskeletal pain drug Celecoxib and received back only 16 of the 27 trials conducted on it.

A separate FOI concerning a similar drug, Valdecoxib, had pages and paragraphs deleted because sections of the document were marked as “trade secrets.” An even worse case involving a leaked report concerning internal memos and secret FDA reports provided detailed evidence that the FDA approved 9 different antidepressants, representing a total of 22 studies enrolling 4,250 children, while knowing full well that the risk of “suicide-related events” was twice as high as children taking a placebo.

These are just several examples among numerous others.

The pharmaceutical industrial complex is perhaps the largest, most influential cartel in the world. This becomes evident after considering the billions of dollars and other currencies drug companies have been forced to pay for a wide variety of corruption charges.

Our analysis of 724 legal settlements from a random sampling among the over one hundred thousand by pharmaceutical corporations totally $87 billion is just a small indication about how pervasive Big Pharma’s criminality since the vast majority of settlements are concluded outside of court and remain confidential.

It is extremely difficult to comprehend why the United States principle federal health agencies, particularly the FDA and National Institutes of Health (NIH), with the specific mandate to provide oversight on all pre-approved drug applications and delegated with the task to assure drugs are safe or at least specify clearly their known dangers, are so reprehensible and inept.

There is only one rational answer and that is the pharmaceutical industry is the FDA’s largest client, and this relationship goes much deeper than the FDA functioning as an objective regulator investigating pharmaceutical products before being released upon the American population.

It is not to far afield to suggest that as it stands now the US regulatory agencies are an extension of corporate America.

As serial offenders of product safety cover-ups for over a decade, drugs have injured and killed millions. In the case Merck’s Vioxx, this one drug has killed 44,000 people and injured 120,000 others. Only in America could you kill 44,000 and not go to jail and get a raise.

Should we assume, therefore, that the pharmaceutical complex should be trusted without challenge?

We have also been asked to believe that the manufacturers were guided by a sense of public service.

But when examining the top ten drugs sold, the facts reveal otherwise. In one example, manufacturers marked up a drug an astounding 500,000% over its equivalent generic version. Six other drugs were marked up 2000%. Pharmaceutical companies make profits higher than oil companies.

Big Pharma’s impact is felt almost everywhere. But nowhere is it felt more than in the legal system. In a recently concluded, short-term study, we found 724 cases involving Big Pharma in which either the case ended in a verdict against the pharmaceutical company or the company settled. The number of cases is staggering, as are the dollar amounts.

These cases cover practically every type of civil and criminal case. From products that kill, harm and maim, to false claims, to not paying taxes, to patent infringements, to bribery, to publishing false scientific journals. Yet, in spite of the tens of thousands of lawsuits won against Big Pharma, it still conducts business as usual.

Eli Lilly flooded state Medicaid programs with Zyprexa: its superstar, antipsychotic drug. In 2003, worldwide sales of Zyprexa grossed $4.28 billion, amounting to almost one third of Lilly’s total sales. In the United States, during the same year, Zyprexa grossed $2.63 billion.

A whopping 70 percent of these sales were directly related to government agencies - principally Medicaid. Fast-forward six years to 2009, Eli Lilly pleaded guilty for having illegally marketed Zyprexa for an unapproved use to treat dementia, and will pay $1.42 billion to settle civil suits and end the criminal investigation.

Lilly agreed to pay $800 million to settle civil suits. It will pay $615 million to resolve the criminal probe, and plead guilty to a misdemeanor in violation of the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act for promoting Zyprexa as a dementia treatment.

Did Lilly also know of the possibility that Zyprexa could cause diabetes, which was also kept concealed under the protection of the FDA?

They most certainly did, which makes their behavior all the more reprehensible. In 2002, British and Japanese regulatory agencies issued a warning that Zyprexa may cause diabetes.

In addition, even after the FDA issued a similar warning in 2003, Lilly did not pull Zyprexa from the market. This becomes all the more understandable after it is taken into consideration that Lilly is also the largest maker of diabetes medications.

An article by Mike Adams, the Natural News editor, states that Merck employees had a “hit list” of doctors they sought to “neutralize.” This allegation was confirmed when documents that had been secret were revealed during a Vioxx court case.

The Australian revealed that the documents surfaced in the Federal Court in Melbourne and exposed the criminal intent of Merck employees who admitted they were going to,

“stop funding to institutions” and “interfere with academic appointments.”

One Merck employee testified (about the doctors on the hit list),

“We may need to seek them out and destroy them where they live.”

Merck threatened or intimidated at least eight clinical investigators, testimony in court revealed. There are other, similar stories in which Merck deals with dissent by attempting to destroy the lives and careers of academics who don’t review their drugs favorably.

Merck is steeped in a well-documented record of criminality.

Such actions include, but are not limited to,

• intentionally hiding the liver-damaging effects of its cholesterol drug, intentionally withholding the release of clinical data that revealed the failures of another cholesterol drug

• it has dumped vaccine waste and manufacturing chemicals into water supplies

• it opened up offshore banking accounts to avoid paying billions of dollars in U.S. taxes

• it was caught in a huge scheme of scientific fraud when it was discovered that the company used in-house writers to secretly write so-called “independent” studies that were published in peer-reviewed medical journals

•

Under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which the U.S. Department of Justice and the SEC enforce, it is illegal to bribe a foreign government official in order to obtain or retain business. Apparently, Bristol-Myers and Schering Plough were unaware of this law.

According to the Associated Press, both drug makers were engaged in influencing government officials in Germany and Poland respectively.

Earlier this year, an article in the Boston Business Journal reported that a former drug company sales executive pleaded guilty in Boston federal court to telling the roughly 100 representatives she supervised that they should promote a pain drug for uses she knew had been rejected by the FDA. Bextra was the drug she pleaded guilty to inappropriately selling. Pfizer has since pulled it from the market.

According to a press release from U.S. Attorney Michael Sullivan's office,

“Holloway was aware of the FDA's safety concerns, but...she nonetheless had her sales staff of approximately 100 employees sells Bextra for precisely the uses that the FDA refused to approve.”

The pharmaceutical complex has also infiltrated the majority of American medical schools and medical research departments.

A recent survey in the Journal of the American Medical Association discovered that,

Researchers who receive funding from drug and medical-device manufacturers are up to 3.5 times as likely to state their study drug or medical device works than are researchers without such funding.

In America, one can hardly turn on the television or pick up a newspaper without reading about the hot button issue of health care reform. Why such emotion? Why are, seemingly, rational people so intransigent and unwilling to budge from their positions? Could lobbyists have anything to do with this?

According to OpenSecrets.org, there are 3093 lobbyists in the health field and Big Pharma now spends approximately $1.2 million daily to persuade Congress to act according to their script. An investigation conducted by Medical Verdicts & Law Weekly found that 30 key lawmakers are involved in health legislation totaling $11 million in health investments.

Three of every four major health firms have at least one lobbyist who worked for a congressman. Startlingly, nine lobbyists employed by Big Pharma are former congressional staffers who are still well-connected to Capitol Hill. The conflicts of interest are everywhere.

Judd Gregg (R-NH), the Obama nominee for Commerce Secretary, who withdrew because of opposition to the Administration's agenda, is a senior member of the Health Committee.

He revealed that he has "$254,000-$560,000 in health stocks."

In 2000, Mylan Labs settled a case for $100 million. What the numbers don’t tell you is the story behind the numbers. In 1998, Mylan raised the wholesale price of clorazepate, a generic tranquilizer, to $377.00 (for 500 tablets) from $11.36 in one year. This represents a 3000% increase on a generic drug.

It was subsequently revealed that Mylan conspired with the main manufacturer of the active, indispensable ingredient to have an exclusive agreement. The agreement prevented any other manufacturers from producing the drug, for without the active ingredient, the drug could not be made. Mylan’s deception was uncovered and it had to pay $100 million to settle an FTC antitrust case.

But Mylan represents only an infinitesimal percentage of such examples. In all likelihood, the vast majority of similar cases remain undetected. The FDA’s under-regulation and erroneous oversight encourages this type of corruption.

Another case included in our study states, “TAP [Taketa-Abbott Pharmaceutical] Pharmaceutical Products Inc. - $875,000,000 under the False Claims Act.” TAP agreed to pay $875 million to resolve criminal charges and civil liabilities in connection with its fraudulent drug pricing and marketing conduct regarding the drug Lupron, according to a press release from the Department of Justice.

Lupron is used by male cancer patients to suppress the production of testosterone.

Another drug worked as well, so to make Lupron the drug of choice for this condition, TAP played dirty by giving kickbacks to physicians prescribing the drug, thus ensuring its ridiculously high price would be maintained. Even though criminal indictments were filed against TAP Pharmaceutical officials, Lupron’s price remains overly inflated.

Ever wonder why Big Pharma would engage in all manner of illegal activity? In light of the steady stream of articles detailing how the elderly are oftentimes forced to choose between purchasing their medication and buying food, a good place to begin is to examine what it costs to make a drug and what Big Pharma sells it for.

Life Extension magazine conducted an original investigative report in which it compared the actual price of a popular drug and how much the generic version of its active ingredients costs.

Examine these figures:

WHAT DRUGS REALLY COST

BRAND NAME

CONSUMER PRICE

(For 100 tabs/caps)

COST OF GENERIC ACTIVE INGREDIENT

(For 100 tabs/caps)

PERCENT MARKUP

Celebrex 100 mg

$130.27

$0.60

21,712%

Claritin 10 mg

$215.17

$0.71

30,306%

Keflex 250 mg

$157.39

$1.88

8,372%

Lipitor 20 mg

$272.37

$5.80

4,696%

Norvasc 10 mg

$188.29

$0.14

134,493%

Paxil 20 mg

$220.27

$7.60

2,898%

Prevacid 30 mg

$344.77

$1.01

34,136%

Prilosec 20 mg

$360.97

$0.52

69,417%

Prozac 20 mg

$247.47

$0.11

224,973%

Tenormin 50 mg

$104.47

$0.13

80,362%

Vasotec 10 mg

$102.37

$0.20

51,185%

Xanax 1mg

$136.79

$0.024

569,958%

Zestril 20 mg

$89.89

$3.20

2,809%

Zithromax 600mg

$1,482.19

$18.78

7,892%

Zocor 40mg

$350.27

$8.63

4,059%

Zoloft 50mg

$206.87

$1.75

11,821%

In order to understand how we can spend 2.6 trillion this year on healthcare, but not reduce the incidence of cancer, heart disease, diabetes, obesity, mental conditions, arthritis, etc., we must realize this is a game.

With each piece of the puzzle, feeding into a single picture of a massively corrupt, unethical, and frequently illegal system controlled by relatively few corporations within the pharmaceutical complex and the health insurance industry, are the ring leaders. They in turn influence thousands of lobbyists, paid-off scientists and academicians, and policymakers, especially those who rule on important health oversight committees.

Health officials and legislators in turn solicit expert witnesses, pre-selected by the cartels, to position their drug agendas in the most favorable manner. The pharmaceutical cartel also has direct connections with its supporting scientific advisory boards and key foundations. These foundations, supported by policy think tanks who supply the so-called independent experts, then lobby the upper echelon within the FDA, NIH, CDC, NIMH, HHS.

Ideally they hire former health commissioners and legislators previously players in the game to assist those same federal agencies to see their drugs guided through the regulatory process. Public relations and advertising firms are contracted to give the public impression that these drugs are effective and safe for the sole reason they have received official licensing.

In addition, the cartel creates front organizations with consumer-friendly titles whose representatives appear at national conferences and seminars beholden to special drug interests. Finally, the drug corporations set money aside to be paid out in settlements. With the exception of class action suits, the majority of cases for injury and death are accompanied by confidentiality clauses to prevent public disclosure of data the companies wish to remain secret.

This is how the medical system is rigged and it is why we can watch 60 Minutes or read the New York Times serving as pharmaceutical shills to encourage vaccination, yet refusing to air or print the dissenting voices who have the scientific evidence to show it is a massive fraud.

Therefore, the public is misled every step of the way.

Victims of injury, such as the tens of thousands of children, now at 1 in 91 children, with autism spectrum disorder, are forced to fend for themselves. Parents know far better than the FDA and CDC, when their perfectly normal child after a vaccination or a series of vaccines shortly thereafter is lost, withdrawn into the dark corners of autism.

And yet the pediatrician and psychologist will say the child must have had a genetic defect. The CDC, FDA and NIH, with an orchestrated voice, say it is not the vaccine. Everyone within the pharmaceutical industrial complex denies the truth.

Only now, during the healthcare debate, are we seeing clearly the rampant politics of the pharmaceutical and insurance industries.

The veils are finally being removed. If it were not for the healthcare debacle, we might still not know how the game is rigged and why our politicians and health officials will not tolerate any real reform and accountability at any level.

If we want to clean up American medicine, the corporate shield must be removed and politicians, health officials and pharmaceutical executives must be held accountable. If they are threatened with jail time for manslaughter by pushing dangerous drugs, then we will see less life-threatening drugs go to market.

We are in a perfect storm without a life raft.

We much take back our freedoms of choice and demand legal accountability or nothing will change.

Use the above link to subscribe to the paid research reports, which include coverage of critically important factors at work during the ongoing panicky attempt to sustain an unsustainable system burdened by numerous imbalances aggravated by global village forces. An historically unprecedented mess has been created by compromised central bankers and inept economic advisors, whose interference has irreversibly altered and damaged the world financial system, urgently pushed after the removed anchor of money to gold. Analysis features Gold, Crude Oil, USDollar, Treasury bonds, and inter-market dynamics with the US Economy and US Federal Reserve monetary policy.

Japan has proved without confusion that 0% is a permanent stuck position. The United States will repeat the path, but with a vast mudslide. Japan has had the advantage of a strong industrial base, a sizeable trade surplus, and no war budget. Thus it has been capable of funding much of its own deficits. It does possess a big debt burden. But the US has $1 of new debt for every $1 in government revenue. The US war budget is almost as large as its total revenue. The US depends upon foreign creditors, many of whom have been thoroughly alienated. The emerging economy nations have embarked on initiatives to avoid the US$ in commerce. Apart from the structural and foreign angles, the US is stuck with a 0% policy. The USFed has no Exit Strategy at their avail, precisely what the Jackass has stated for over a year. It cannot manage any change, as sharp knives, machetes, and guillotines await on the other side of the monetary doorway. The present 0% road to ruin is fixed, as the USFed cannot change course from it. This is simple to see, when eyes are open and mind functioning rationally. The gaggle of US economists is locked in the Keynesian straitjacket, complete with commitment to its aberrations, mired in debt. They believe zero cost money can lead the way out of an indebted bind. They hold out hope of recovery, more than create feasible conditions for one. Together with the bankers, they show signs recently of awakening to their helpless helm devoid of tools, perhaps even an awakening to the systemic failure.

OBSTRUCTIONS FROM THE 0% BOX

A rise in official interest rate would bring about five things, and cause total wreckage quickly. Therefore the present course will be kept, with full political support, ample justification, expressed banker urgency, reckless enthusiasm, and growing desperation. The immediate fallout from moving off the present pathway of 0% money would be a fast falling USTreasury Bond or USDollar. Immediate effects from lifting the 0% rate:

1. Pinprick the USTreasury Bond bubble, loaded with too much short-term issuance 2. Deliver a louder death sentence to the housing market, crippled and falling again 3. Kill off several major banks, all of which are deeply insolvent 4. Send the US stock market into a powerful bear market, even with a PPTeam 5. Light the fuse for a credit derivative explosion, centered upon Interest Rate Swaps.

This is not complicated. The entire concept of an Exit Strategy should invite derision even more than from Green Shoots. Nothing even remotely could happen to permit an exit, since the system would implode. The experts call it a Liquidity Trap. The better description is a Tight Box with liquidity running so hard and fast that the entire foundation structure of the castle is dissolved. The box (USEconomy) has lost so much of its capital, such as industrial base, that it operates dysfunctionally. When a nation loses the bulk of its industry, in particular its ability to manufacture its own transportation vehicles, it is doomed. Then there is the decrepit infrastructure. The march to the Third World is clear.

Tightly coupled with the constriction to maintain 0% is the requirement to maintain a semi-infinite increase to the monetary aggregate, the money supply. They have a euphemistically name for it, called Quantitative Easing. That makes it sound more erudite, more sophisticated, more acceptable, more impressive. But QE is cancer, especially when fresh money is printed to cover teetering USTreasury auctions, especially when fresh money is printed to cover interest on the USTreasury debt, especially when fresh money is printed to cover perhaps half of the entire gargantuan budget deficit. The QE is cancer since zero cost money has killed capital and eliminated the process of capital formation. US economists have a gigantic blind spot in this regard, leading to the current moribund condition. If truth be told, fresh money is financing most of the USGovt debt converted to USTreasury Bonds. If truth be told, fresh money is financing vast tranches of various types of bonds. If truth be told, fresh money is financing most of the abandoned foreign-held USAgency Mortgage Bonds. They dumped $57 billion worth in a single week recently.

Next comes the long death march to the USTreasury default first forecasted in September 2008. It earned some laughter and mockery, but no more. My timetable back then was two to three years before the inevitability was clear. That is now. It is becoming clear, as the pathogenesis of debt suffocation and credit system constipation requires time to cause severe internal blockage. The slowness in admitting the QE2 initiative marked by bond monetization is testament to the growing consensus among bankers that not only will it accomplish nothing, but it risks a pinprick of the USTreasury bubble. Calls of a gold bubble are shallow vapid pontifications, since the sanctioned asset bubble is in the mammoth pile of celebrated USTreasurys. It is the last bubble before systemic failure. A few big banks will begin collapsing within a few weeks or months, from resumed property based credit portfolio losses, or basic derivative losses tied to gold & silver, even Interest Rate Swaps. It takes a lot of leverage and power to keep the required 0% rate in place. The cost of money is never zero.

Doug Noland (Prudent Bear) is an alert adept analyst, with a constant eye trained on bubbles. He perceives the presence of a USTreasury Bond bubble. He notes the symptoms, all too clear in a series of asset bubbles sponsored by the USFed. He sees the extreme danger of urgent need to finance the bubble. It must attract huge amounts of working capital and therefore starves the USEconomy. The ultra-low US interest rate climate is proof positive of a systemic failure in the making. Noland wrote, "Of course, skyrocketing bond prices have given rise to fundamental justification. Interminable deflation risk is at the top of the list of why bond returns will indefinitely outperform cash. I am reminded of how technology stocks and home prices were only to go higher. My analytical framework downplays deflation and focuses instead on a debt Bubble fueled by the Federal Reserve, the Peoples Bank of China, the EuroCB, the Bank of Japan, and the approaching $1 trillion year-to-date increase in global central bank reserves. Throw in hedge fund speculator leveraging and the billions flowing weekly (in search of any yield) into global fixed income, and one sees all the necessary financing for a historic bubble."

An important side effect of the 0% environment is the promoted powerful predominant Gold bull market. The price inflation is not near nil, as the official doctored data promotes. The Shadow Govt Statistics folks deal in realistic statistics. The SGS true CPI is closer to the 5% to 7% range for a few years running. Only a compromised mind or motivated promoter would challenge the integrity of John Williams and the veracity of his standard statistics. The SGS jobless rate, when people without work are counted in the formula, stands at 22%. The powerful Gold bull market is fed and built since the cost of money is negative 5% to 7%, enough to fuel speculation as well as investment exodus into precious metals. The Gold bull will continue as long as the cost of money is negative. Investors flee the conventional paper vehicles like stocks, bonds, and housing since they are struggling on the other side of the busted bubble dynamics. Besides, paper money has been called into question. Denominated valuations are fast losing their meaning. The food prices are the big alarm bell in addition to the Gold price. Both are canaries in the coal mine. The canaries are dead or dying.

EXTREME SCATTERED NOTES & THOUGHTS

Permit an uncharacteristic scattered flow of notes and thoughts, considered important in the theme of monetary system. Much danger lurks. The tipping point to higher price inflation is uncertain and unclear. Without a doubt, the process can flip on a dime. A USEconomic recovery in my view, or a sincere effort to promote one, would risk pushing past the tipping point easily, and risk hyper-inflation hitting quickly. The Deflationist Knuckleheads have undergone a learning experience, finally and thankfully. All things needed will cost more, while all things desired will be valued less. The former are necessities to survive, while the latter are derived extensions from busted asset bubbles. GOLD IS NOT A COMMODITY; IT IS MONEY. Furthermore, WHEN ASSETS ARE BURNED, VALID MONEY IS PURSUED AND MADE KING. Most chaotic inroads are caused by food price explosions. The US is seeing precisely that. The killer to the USEconomy remains to be the property sector, residential housing and commercial property. They lifted the USEconomy from 2002 to 2005, with all the fanfare inherent to asset bubbles and public glee, helped along by cheerleading from the myopic Greenspan USFed. My ears still ring from his high praise to off-loaded risk in sophisticated leveraged financial instruments. These proved to be weapons of mass destruction. The greatest innovation of bankers since 1980 still is the ATM cash dispenser.

Beware of extreme events in hidden form. Like a bank failure. Like the friction between the Chinese Govt and Japanese Govt. Like the lost control of the gold & silver prices, which could reveal depleted inventory vaults at the COMEX & LBMA. Like the incorrect perception sometime by the USFed of rampant sales (a run) of USTreasurys. Incidents in a systemic failure climate can grow out of control, cause ripple events, and lead to a string of breakdowns much like the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand of the Austro-Hungarian Empire almost 100 years ago. The failure of Bank of America would qualify. Bear in mind that the short position for gold at the COMEX & LBMA is roughly equal to the entire earth potential of future gold mining. Bear in mind that the short position for silver at the COMEX & LBMA is roughly equal to twice the global annual production. A short squeeze is just around the corner for the precious metals, better described as money in metal form. It will cause fireworks and bank failures, maybe even misguided attempts to confiscate gold & silver by the USGovt.

Lost control is obvious with Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, AIG, Fannie Mae, and Countrywide. The nationalization of AIG covered up the credit derivative explosion certain to occur, averted by virtue of the extreme hidden monetization still underway. Hardly a virtue! The nationalization of Fannie Mae covered up the mortgage bond market explosion and colossal fraud, averted by virtue of the extreme hidden monetization still underway. Hardly a virtue! Liquidity is proving to include a high degree of acidity. Fires burn bright and hot under the USGovt wings as bond capital is quickly destroyed. Beware of beacon events on the horizon, such as the QE2 Launch into oblivion, such as the Midterm 2010 election (switch party control, keep the gridlock amidst recession), such as the escalating trade wars. The road to the Third World involves breakdown of the mental process, where instead of admitting errors, they are compounded. Stimulus, bank rescues, and bond monetization are precisely these repeated errors.

An interesting label has come from Muhammed El-Erian of PIMCO, who describes the New Normal of increased fear of deflation. Nice name, wrong concepts. To me the New Normal pertains to a broken monetary system, a Printing Pre$$ gone amok, credit engines sputtering, chronic moribund economy, depressed labor market, burdened businesses, phony cost of money, constant market interventions, heavy pork projects continuing, banker losses [taxpayer] subsidized, hype about energy independence, Syndicate control of the USDept Treasury, and endless war, where all the broken pieces are declared normal, all the broken markets are declared normal, all the broken political parties are declared normal, all the broken checks & balances are declared normal, and all the fraud is excused as errors of judgment (see the Hank Paulson apologies).

The Keynesian approach has been equivalent to debasement of currency on a continual basis until the system approaches failure. We are witnessing exactly that, with some growing recognition. Accurate perceptions of the failure gradually are labeled as contrary to the system. See preservation of capital like using gold investments. Soon the USGovt great grab will attract by force the private pension funds in order to feed the USTreasury bubble. Soon the USGovt great grab will attract by force the bank certificates of deposit in order to feed the USTreasury bubble. Resistance will be taxed heavily, punitively, and declared contrary to the system. The people are awakening, confused still, but growing wiser. There are new harvestings of civil liberties taking place every day, mostly in the name of national security, but also in the name of restoring order, and in the prevention of collapse. Within the confusing collage are letters that read CENTRAL BANKS FAILED. Central bankers in the Western nations are scared witless of systemic failure and monetary system collapse. Their Stress Tests, both in the United States and Europe, have been thoroughly discredited. They manage over a gradually ruined landscape. Further details on the widely occurring systemic failure are covered in the September Hat Trick Letter.

BEGGAR THY NEIGHBOR, INFLATE AT HOME

The USDollar should devalue sharply, but other major currencies are equally weakened and diluted. The date of September 21st of 2010 will be remembered as a day of infamy, just like March 15th of 2009, when the first QE Launch was announced. At the FOMC meeting on Tuesday this week, a critical juncture was passed. The USFed confirmed what it strongly hinted last month. They are officially willing to ease monetary policy further to spur growth and support prices. Later they will expand their balance sheet, like with another $2 trillion in wrecked securities. The USFed is the ultimate Bad Bank, soon to become a Worse Bank, then later possibly a Dead Bank. The statement read, "The committee will continue to monitor the economic outlook and financial developments and is prepared to provide additional accommodation if needed to support the economic recovery and to return inflation, over time, to levels consistent with its mandate." That is a green light for QE2, when the need grows urgent, like the day after tomorrow. Nonsense about price inflation was stated as justification, which they strive to manage, but consistently mismanage. It cannot be managed. Background conditions of high jobless rate are painfully true, although it is more than twice the official rate.

Gold rose quickly on the news to a record high, then extended the high on Wednesday. Speculation is ripe, and very correctly on the mark, that the USFed will purchase additional USGovt securities in coming months in a bid to grease the system with a torrent of liquidity. They risk eventual hyper-inflation without the realization. They will push it until they get it. They risk global rejection of the USDollar. They risk global sales of USTreasurys that might outpace the USGovt ability to monetize and purchase what foreigners sell. They risk lost integrity of the central banks. Behold the quick response in the Gold price to the anticipated QE2 imminent launch admission, in the subsequent two hours. It is a launch into icy waters strewn with icebergs and a certain fate of systemic plunge to the depths, a potential watery grave. USFed Chairman Bernanke must be deeply disillusioned knowing that $2 to $3 trillion in zero-cost money thrown at bond redemptions, banker welfare, corporate rescues, and stimulus fixed nothing. Notice the sudden afternoon jump in the gold price. The $1300 price is just around the corner.

GOLD TO THE MOON

The end of September will form a launching pad for the gold & silver prices. Several large major world banks have monstrous short positions in need of covering. A short squeeze might have begun in earnest. A big bank failure is just a matter of time. The September Hat Trick Letter identifies the primary candidates among the big banks for failure and bankruptcy dissolution. Egon Von Greyerz of Matterhorn Asset Mgmt provides solid arguments for three firm gold price targets at $6000, $7000 and $10,000. These are reasonable future targets, each justified, good rational arguments made. He cites the 24-fold rise from $35 per ounce to $850 witnessed from 1971 to 1980 in the last cycle, where it was released from a controlled setting. It could happen again, as control is lost, sending gold to $6000. He applies a correct price inflation adjustment to the past $850 peak price, using the Shadow Govt statistics, to arrive at a $7000 past peak target. He recalls an historical 25% of total market capitalization attributed to gold and mining shares. If that ratio were reached in financial assets once again, gold would need to rise to $31,000 per ounce. Factor in a powerful 65% bear market in stocks from current levels, and one would arrive at a $10,000 gold price. Thus the three historical comparisons offer potential targets for the gold price anywhere between $6000 and $10,000. Futhermore, the Von Greyerz targets assume no additional deep erosion in money standards from price inflation, or even the highly likely hyper-inflation. We will see bigtime price inflation, hence his conservative approach. See the Gold Switzerland article. If your memories of Jackie Gleason are revived, we are in synch.

As long as the current central bankers are in charge, the potential Gold price on this long-term bull market has almost no limit. The power center in charge is tied to the power center, which will not order bank asset liquidation, since a death sentence. That is the first requirement for remedy. It will never happen. The monetary system required a tangible core for stability, realism, and counter-balance. Only gold would serve the role. It will never happen. Instead of investment in a new and better global mousetrap, the broken one will receive unlimited funds for reinforcement, not new design. Thus the exercise in futility that feeds the great gold bull. The investment in failure described in a recent public article has prevailed and flourished. Thus, the upward pressure on the Gold price is unlimited. As money is wasted, the major currencies are rapidly undermined. As the government deficits continue in hemorrhage, the sovereign bonds are rapidly undermined. Gold is an investment in survival. It is a registered investment vote of no confidence. It is the ultimate safe haven in an increasingly dangerous world. The Gold price is going to the moon, at least $3000 per ounce. The silver price is going to the moon, at least $80 per ounce. Just give it time. Like a beautiful Costa Rican orchid, they just need water and sunlight. The water is the vast liquidity spread haphazardly by architects of ruin. The sunlight is the awareness of a broken system, the awareness of the legitimacy of Gold & Silver, and the awareness that they are missing in the system.

UNFORTUNATE SUNSET ON ROUBINI

New York University Professor Nouriel Roubini was once a truly fine economist and analyst. From 2003 to 2006 he was brilliant in his dire warnings of USEconomic breakdown and housing market collapse. In the last year, Roubini has really slipped in his skills or has been unduly altered by Wall Street influence. Roubini has morphed into an economist cut from substandard cloth who simply does not understand gold. Roubini expects a short-term selloff in gold. He was correct last december 2009, in his similar call. Methinks this time, he is way off the mark. He has never favored gold. He makes some curious, if not fallacious points in criticism. He wrote, "September may be a good month to take partial or full profits for an investor with a long gold position. Alternatively an interested investor could buy December put options. Investors should thus be wary of getting the gold bug and being stuck with this barbarous relic. The recent swings in gold price, up 10% one month, down 10% the next, prove the point that gold has little intrinsic value and that most of its price movements are based on beliefs and bubbles. As an insurance policy against the tail risk of eventual inflation, it may be useful to hold a small amount of gold in one’s portfolio, but stocking up portfolios with a fiat currency that has marginal practical use, a zero nominal interest rate, high storage costs, and the price of which is subject to volatile whims and bubbles is totally irrational... Unlike other commodities, it has little intrinsic value. Much like a fiat currency, gold's value is based largely on the irrational beliefs of investors. In a depression or near depression, one would be better off stockpiling canned food and other commodities like oil that are useful for riding out Armageddon. You cannot eat gold or burn gold." What a mouthful of substandard analysis!!

One must wonder if Roubini has noticed that the banking system lacks capital, since the primary reserves have been bond based, as in debt. Gold serves as excellent bank ballast in stormy times. He failed to observe that if the big banks were in possession of gold in reserves, they would not have turned insolvent during the gold price advance. Gold capital gains are enormous. Bond principal losses greatly overshadow their yields. Besides, Warren Buffet proved that gold & silver offer a yield, as in writing call options. The irrational beliefs expressed by Nouriel pertain more to stock and bond prices, one might easily conclude in the current environment with the grand USTreasury Bond bubble. The European sovereign debt crisis drove that point home rather vividly and thoroughly. Surely Nouriel must have noticed how the bond confidence erosion serves as a major motive to own gold in the past several months.

Conditions are very different now versus December 2009, when Roubini was correct in his anticipation of a gold price correction. What followed was a 14% to 15% price correction, then a long consolidation. He does not detect the benefit from the consolidation phase and return to crisis, thus the fertile ground for the next major gold price advance. Roubini must not observe that nothing has been remedied, no reform enacted, no restructure accomplished, but much more money wasted. His style of rear-view-mirror forecasting is a shabby statistician practice, a lazy endeavor. This time around, the gold seasons work against his new wayward gold forecast. Last December, the strong season was coming to an end. This September, the strong season is beginning. The big runup in the gold price will crush the shorts and shatter the reputations of many formerly respected analysts. His negative bearish call goes against the typical strong months of September through January, when last year the gold price rose from $950 to $1225. In the autumn of 2008, the gold price rose from $720 to $1000. What a limited awareness he has of the strong gold season, even pattern recognition. He does not comprehend gold!

Enter the second errant Roubini call concerning gold. Nouriel Roubini is on record with a position that the USDollar, the Japanese Yen, and the Swiss Franc may be a better investment than gold, if the global economy suffers recession. What an incredibly block-headed analytic viewpoint. A recession comes, then all major currencies will be undermined by excessive deficits and the response in monetary stimulus. Gold will thrive versus the major currencies, suddenly in much greater supply. This is simple Supply & Demand, whose dynamic escapes many economists, like a mental stain. He said, "If there was a double dip recession, increasing risk aversion, some assets are going to be preferred, and gold will be one of them. But in that situation, things like the dollar, the yen, the Swiss franc have more upside in a situation of rising risk aversion because they are much more liquid than the gold market. I believe that gold is going to trade around current levels. There are two extreme events that lead to a spike in gold. One is inflation, but we have no inflation in advanced economies. If anything, there is a risk of deflation. The other event in which gold prices go up is the risk of a global financial meltdown, and that tail risk has been reduced because we backstopped the financial system."

Roubini fails to recognize that the so-called backstop is nothing but impaired bond redemption, investment in failed gigantic financial firms, and countless liquidity facilities. The backstop is fashioned from the same sovereign bonds being attacked for their integrity and lofty values. The central bankers have rendered great damage with their own swords of debt. When the backstop proves inadequate, the gold price will respond with great power, enough to capture global attention. He fails to comprehend that the device enabling the requisite monetary flow is from dubious sources, namely the Printing Pre$$. Erosion of the USDollar is in high gear, but also for other major currencies, thus the entire monetary system. Gold responds with price rises versus such debased currencies, maybe uniformly. Nouriel seems ignorant of the monetary system. Moreover, the US stock market has seen 20 consecutive weeks of profound money exit flows. Maybe Nouriel does not monitor capital flows. It is called the Competing Currency War, something Nouriel must be aware of. Gold is the main winner in such wars. Next, in response to the USFed sponsored QE2 Launch, watch for Europe to announce a similar initiative. After all, they do NOT want the rising Euro currency to torpedo the strong German export trade. Some call this retaliatory gesture beggar thy neighbor. Money is being debauched, debased, and destroyed at a pace not seen in decades, maybe half a century. And Roubini believes the major currencies will outperform Gold in the spirited climate of a monetary paper flood sequence. His forecast might qualify more as propaganda than analysis! The heavy reliance upon the monetary engines toward empty output reduce the value of money itself, thus lift the gold price.

ULTIMATE MONETARY TRUTH

The majority of economic and bank analysts, like Roubini, simply does not comprehend gold! He does not comprehend its role as a reserve asset, nor the extreme attack to the integrity of sovereign debt, which supports the major currencies. He does not notice the debasement of money from profound abuse in its incremental wasted creation. Investors are rushing in pursuit of securities considered the most secure in a slowdown, as evidence mounts that the USEconomy has run out of momentum in its contrived rebound without remedy, reform, or restructure. Roubini does not comprehend the monetary system versus an anchor, either implied or direct, as in the gold anchor. The monetary high truth demands a value of the global reserve currency versus true money, whether sanctioned and blessed by the Ideological High Priests or simply implied. Gold and crude oil, even housing, have filled the implied gap for decades. They are called inflation hedges. These priests are heretics to sound money principles, thus the great financial crisis. Roubini cites US recession statistics and concepts with the best in his class, but he fails to link the official policy actions to a detrimental effect on the monetary and currency systems. The winner from the approach pattern to systemic failure is gold & silver.

Kurt NimmoInfowars.comSeptember 27, 2010For the sixth day in a row, the price of gold has skyrocketed. On Monday, the precious metal climbed to a 30-year high as fiat paper money values tumbled. Gold for immediate delivery rose as much as 0.3 percent to an all-time high $1,300.15 an ounce.

Instead of rushing into government created paper assets, [smart] investors are buying gold and silver.

“There is a net devaluing of currencies,” James Moore, an analyst at TheBullionDesk.com in London. told Bloomberg this morning. Gold gained as Ireland prepares to bail out Anglo Irish Bank Corp. and speculation other European banks lack adequate capital.The dollar fell after Ben Bernanke announced the Federal Reserve is prepared to launch a new round of quantitative easing [QE] by buying millions of dollars of bonds.The Federal Open Market Committee’s September 21 statement said it “will continue to monitor the economic outlook and financial developments and is prepared to provide additional accommodation if needed to support the economic recovery.” Quantitative easing is a term used when the Fed increases the size of the money supply and floods financial institutions with capital in order to promote increased lending and liquidity.It should be noted that the Fed used quantitative easing during the first Great Depression. The Fed began to purchase securities in the open market in April of 1933 and eventually shifted to the Treasury and the White House through gold purchases. On August 28, 1933, Roosevelt moved to confiscate all gold held by citizens.JPMorgan Chase & Co. said there is a 75 percent chance that the Fed will start another round of “asset purchases” before the end of this year to boost the economy, supporting Treasury bond prices, according to Bloomberg.However, as Bob Chapman of the International Forecaster noted earlier this month, the Fed effort is doomed to fail in a spectacular way. “What the Fed has been approaching since June is a ‘liquidity trap.’ That is when loans are offered to business and they refuse to borrow. They stop using credit because they question the future of the economy, their government and the specter of new taxes in the future. Money and credit is available, but few want to assume the risks to borrow,” writes Chapman.

Instead of rushing into government created paper assets, investors are buying gold and silver. “This market is the exact opposite of the gold and silver markets, which are in an 11-year bull market. The metals separated from the dollar 15 months ago and they have already won the battle of the world’s only real currency. Gold has gained 15% a year for those last 7 years. This is a secular bull market and cannot be denied. Further, gold has appreciated annually against every currency,” writes Chapman.Central banks around the world have moved into gold, a trend that began in the 1980s. India, China, Russia, and other nations have increased their gold reserves as fiat currencies hit the skids and the Greatest Depression picks up steam.The continued gold rush and the remarkable rise in prices of both gold and silver represent a bellwether for the demise of the dollar. The decline of the dollar means millions of Americans will suffer a huge loss of purchasing power and a sharp decline in living standards. In fact, this process is now already well underway as unemployment rises and the middle class shrinks in size.It is not the vagaries of the stock market or inept government economic policy that has ushered in the Greatest Depression.The Federal Reserve is not run by clueless government bureaucrats. It is a subsidiary of the [Rothschild] bankster cartel and federal only in name.The Greatest Depression now underway is an engineered event. The destruction of the dollar, the increase in the fiat money supply that will create merciless inflation, and the slow withering away of the middle class — all of this is part of the plan to remake the world as the globalists see it.If the Greatest Depression is allowed to continue unabated — and it looks like it will — billions of people will be reduced to serfdom under a global government scheme cooked up by the elite.Protect yourself from the collapsing global economy by investing in gold and silver.Midas Resources is now offering a fantastic deal on American Buffalo Gold Bullion Coins. American Buffalo Gold Bullion Coins are the first .9999 fine 24-karat gold coins ever struck by the United States Mint and offered for sale through a network of Authorized Purchasers. These $50 gold coins are available to members of the public seeking a simple and tangible means to own and invest in 24-karat gold in the form of legal tender coins whose content and purity is guaranteed by the United States Government.Call Midas Resources to get the American Buffalo today at 1-888-294-6187 and tell them you heard about it from Alex Jones or order it here, now.–Kurt Nimmo edits Infowars.com. He is the author of Another Day in the Empire: Life In Neoconservative America.--END

Some people are calling it the BP Flu. But it is commonly being called the Blue Flu, because the alleged symptoms include blue lips and skin; and it's scaring the hell out of people all around the Gulf area -from Texas to Florida.

This Blue Flu is separate from people experiencing something called TILT, or "Toxic-Induced Loss of Tolerance." TILT is something that hit some of the folks who had been working on the massive cleanup surrounding the oil spill. Symptoms from TILT include eyes and skin being irritated, headaches and dizziness.

People with TILT are typically those who were in the immediate area of the spill, mostly those directly involved with the cleanup. Those suffering from Blue Flu are an entirely different matter. These are people who were not in direct contact with the spill, or the cleanup chemicals. They simply live in the south, near the Gulf.

Symptoms include swollen glands, notably in the neck, fever, vomiting, headache, bluish lip color, numbness in fingers and toes. The most alarming symptom being reported is "severe symptomatic cyanosis." This is the entire body turning blue, a discoloration of the skin.

Of course this could cause alarm that these are symptoms of oxygen depletion along the Gulf. But could this rather be from all that Corexit that was sprayed everywhere, including dropped through the air from airplanes? This was a lot of chemical deposited in a large area, in a short frame of time. One wonders how the people living in the area could not be sickened from it.

Here's a littleabout Corexit:

Corexit is a product line of solvents primarily used as a dispersant for breaking up oil slicks. It is produced by Nalco Holding Company which is associated with BP and Exxon.

Corexit is the most-used dispersant in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, with COREXIT 9527 having been replaced by COREXIT 9500 after the former was deemed too toxic.

Oil that would normally rise to the surface of the water is broken up by the dispersant into small globules that can then remain suspended in the water.

Whatever the cause the Blue Flu, it is important to note that the oil spill wasn't cleaned up - it was covered up. As stated in the above quote, the Corexit that was sprayed and dumped all over the place is simply a (rather dangerous) chemical agent that prevented the oil from surfacing.

After all, the government isn't interested in your safety. Rather, the government is interested in creating the illusion of safety. And the government often harms even more people in the end in their effort to keep up appearances.

Thus, expect the Blue Flu to be kept under wraps as much as possible. In an effort to deflect criticism, I would not be surprised if the government sounded an alarm over another flu bug - an effort at misdirection. The political class wants the oil spill story out of the way and forgotten.

There are two major articles about Blue Flu that I read, none in the msm.

One story is pretty alarmist in tone, and another that strives to be far more measured with this. However, the story appears to be well written and sourced - the writer quotes people about Blue Flu.

That article is at worldvisionportal.org. The writer wonders if these are symptoms of oxygen depletion in the air and water. Here's a little from that one:

Along with the symptoms that mimic flu-like viruses, there are increasing cases of severe symptomatic cyanosis. These rapidly increasing symptoms range from bluish lip color to numbness in fingers and toes. There is also a fast growing increase of pneumonia cases which are being diagnosed as chemical induced pneumonia. Those working on boats and those living directly on the coast are the most effected.

Cyanosis is simply oxygen starvation in the blood. With a moderate case involving such a lack of oxygen, the skin appears to have a blueish colour. Hands and fingers especially show these signs as will other extremities such as toes and lips. A lack of oxygen in the blood can also have a purplish appearance where the skin surface is red from sun exposure but the blood beneath the skin is blue. Red and blue make purple.

If all these BLUE FLU symptoms were temporary, most everyone suffering from them would eventually recover as the blood becomes increasingly oxygenated once removed from the oxygen depletion source.

I wanted to double check the statement that "cyanosis is simply oxygen starvation in the blood," so I went over to wikipedia :

During cyanosis, tissues are uncharacteristically low on oxygen, and therefore tissues that would normally be filled with bright oxygenated blood are instead filled with darker, deoxygenated blood. Darker blood is much more prone to the blue-shifting optical effects,[3] and thus oxygen deficiency - hypoxia - leads to blue discoloration of the lips and other mucous membranes.

The writer goes on to suggest that, "while the Blue Flu symptoms are increasing for more and more people, those who have had 30+ days of direct exposure to the toxic and oxygen depleted Gulf air and water are in immediate danger of permanent and irreversible biological damage. if not death."

Damn. Now's a great time to look at the more measured, less panicked article.

Over at Meta Oceanic Research, an article covers a few new Gulf-spill-related symptoms being reported online. The article looks at the symptoms of TILT and the Blue Flu.

The entire article is pretty interesting for the comparison, and it's a fairly quick read. For the info on the Blue Flu, it references the World Vision Portal. The article ends with this:

We caution the reader that everything in the World Vision Portal post is hearsay so far, but it echoes and dovetails with verifiable similar cases. It's also extremely well-written and motivates us to keep an eye on the story and research the matter further ourselves.

Interestingly, I believe there was a prediction made by Webbot of a 'Blue Flu.'

And there have been concerns in science magazines that we could have a problem - a natural problem - with a lack of oxygen. And then, clearly, the oil spill and chemical agents could make a natural problem into an unnatural problem.

Of course panic solves nothing. We'll keep an eye on this as best we can. It will be interesting to see if the Blue Flu is something that we never hear about again, or if it becomes something too big for the msm to avoid.

Tags: Blue Flu, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, oil spill, Texas Categories: conspiracy Read More NextDead British girl "quite chuffed" she's on Google Maps PreviousCould WWII have been avoided? The man who saved Hitler from being kicked to death by a mob 19 Responses {+} a.. Tom Swirly August 18, 2010 at 7:24 am We'll be seeing more nasty effects like this - you can't dump tens of thousands of tons of poison into the environment without hurting a lot of people.

But: "The writer wonders if these are symptoms of oxygen depletion in the air and water."

Absolutely not. In order to actually turn people's lips blue, the partial pressure of oxygen would have to drop to astonishingly low levels, lower than anywhere on the planet. No one could miss this - for example, you'd pass out if you tried to run, everyone with asthma or pneumonia or heck, even a heavy cold! would simply die.

b.. betty August 27, 2010 at 8:13 pm Could it be from all the methane that was released into the air displaced the oxygen? That is what methane does. That is what Matthew Simmons was warning the gulf residents about when he said they MUST evacuate. Methane is odorless, but it displaces/replaces oxygen!!! Hence the cyanosis, blue lips!

c.. Lounge Daddy August 27, 2010 at 11:55 pm If that's the case, then heck ya I agree. They gotta evacuate.

d.. Rev. Reggie Jackson August 28, 2010 at 3:43 am Its only a matter of a short time that we see the true affect of the new world order antichrist International Bankers/Illuminati and their Bilderberger cohorts; have done in blowing up that Gulf Oil Well. And I predicted that it will have devastating affects on our economy and national health.

These devils mentioned above are genocidal and eugenicist maniacs who love death and suffering and chaos. For they are Luciferians who serve their lord Lucifer well in his mass murders and genocides.

And their punishments along with their daddy Lucifers punishments will be greatly severe and agonizingly painful forever and ever and ever!!

But we that know and serve Jesus will not take their zombie making and mind controlling mark of the beast chip very soon!! According to Revelation 13 and 14 and especially Rev. 14:9-11 !!

e.. Tell Me No Lies August 28, 2010 at 3:54 am Still the best info re OILGEDDON.

http://www.theamericansheeple.com/specialpublication.html

you'll laugh all the way to your grave.

f.. Thebes August 29, 2010 at 7:44 am Displacement of Oxygen by either methane or corexit is not a possibility here.

I just want people to be aware that is an absurd suggestion, it makes other related suggestions (something in atmosphere is interfering with blood oxygen Uptake, say) seem wrong by association.

I live at 7000 some feet and worked at a ski area at 11000 (!) feet. At this altitude visitors from Texas get drunk off two beers. People do have altitude sickness and are sometimes evacuated, this is due to lack of pressure and bleeding into lungs or brain, not blood oxygen levels. Mild hypoxia is common and some might argue even chronic. Even with this hypoxia, and understand we have like 30% less oxygen than most people, even at this rate no one ever turns blue. That level of methane would cause problems far worse than hypoxia!

g.. Saoirse September 3, 2010 at 3:39 am really NEED to see this topic out and about to TAKE IT SERIOUSLY-

About Me

ROLAND SAN JUAN was a researcher, management consultant, inventor, a part time radio broadcaster and a publishing director. He died last November 25, 2008 after suffering a stroke. His staff will continue his unfinished work to inform the world of the untold truths. Please read Erick San Juan's articles at: ericksanjuan.blogspot.com This blog is dedicated to the late Max Soliven, a FILIPINO PATRIOT.
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